Ask HN: Have you ever worked in a non-capitalist coding collective? How was it?
Like an anarchist coding coop, or a democratic tech workplace, or anything like that?
I'm really curious about this. I recently worked with https://cng.ngo/ (their online presence is atrocious, ironically, I found out about them through local friends) for a month creating radio infrastructure for Poqomchi language speakers in Guatemala, and it was amazing.
I'm really curious what other peoples' experiences have been.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 418 ms ] threadI wonder if there are any coops out there that are making good money organizing with horizontal structures like this. I don't think a lot of people even try it, but it's pretty cool.
[0] https://www.igalia.com/about/
It was fairly half-baked but the general idea was to get a group of people together in the same physical location and work together like a commune to provide for each others basic needs, (food, water, shelter, clothing etc...) this is really no different than most other communes in the world.
The difference being that these would be considered chores. The main form of work which would need to be done that would actually bring in resources would be some form of technical software work, where everyone in the group is expected to create/contribute to software projects. These projects and work could and should be sold for money, however the group itself is not a profit driven organization, any proceeds just go back into increasing the total wealth of the group.
I realized a bit later that this is really an Non-for profit organization with a few extra steps and caveats.
But the basic idea being:
- Group provides basic needs for you to code
- Resources from the coding work done is reinvested into the group.
For real though, what does that even mean?
PLA (1965): good meat on local farmers.
PLA (1968): good thoughts about Mao.
PLA (2022): good takeout, with chinese characteristics.
So depending on the commune, imagine a point between the four tactics.
You can also checkout all the "Code For America" organizations for local nonprofit government coding projects. I don't know if it will fit your anarchist philosophy but it would certainly help to have more volunteers to help connect citizens to their local US governments.
Basically 20 years technologically behind West on 1/20th salary.
How would they survive and pay their workers?
You realize that this comment is the same level as saying "but how do ecologists find their food?". They do it just like you do. money != capitalism.
> what would be the characteristics of a [..]?
A given practical and delimited goal (explicitely not the capitalistic "accumulate until death"). (probably the weakest and most widely accepted characteristic of such things to the extent that it has even been coopted by some ideologically capitalistic entities)
You ought to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100
In simple terms: the capitalist mode of production is characterized by private ownership. Whereupon one or a group of individuals that own the capital get to decide about what is done with the profits that are generated by the firm through the labour of the workers.
So a non capitalist firm would be one where it is not the owners of capital that decide but the owners of labour (the workers).
Applied to tech, it would as if the workers in Facebook were the ones that made all decisions, as opposed to just mark zuckerger and the board (who are decided on by shareholders).
Now, there are also mixed models which are common in Scandinavian countries as well as Germany usually named 'co-determination' models; in these, workers get a presence in the board of directors and can influence decisions.
These would be non capitalist modes of production, it doesnt really mean they dont make money or that they dont participate in markets and competition. Of course, markets are also an important part of capitalism but markets are impervious to the mode of production. You can have state enterprise participate in market dynamics together with privately or publicly owned firms alongside coops.
Coops can survive very well under market competition dynamics. But there is an argument to be made about being undercut by privately owned firms that can easily make their products/services cheaper through off shoring and other anti-labour practices. In the end, the world is so large that competition is not as cut throat as in theoretical models... But still, the criticism of markets is there.
https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100
[1]: https://galois.com/
The old site is still around. We used to set up our groups and post stuff we built there: https://create-games.com/
There are many others: - https://github.com/hng/tech-coops - https://patio.ica.coop/ - https://community.coops.tech/
And there are many more private and other active channels! Contact me for more info +81 90 6523 2640 yasu@yasuaki.com
And just personally contact me please
Imagine if the shareholders, management, and labor union were all one and the same, vs adversarial. It's really that simple.
Here's some (overly verbose) entry points into the topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_self-management
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-03-11/worker-self-di...
https://www.democracyatwork.info/democratizing_the_workplace
I'm personally involved in our open science projects, the other projects are all for internal use. Overall I greatly enjoy not needing to squeeze profit out of what we do :)
Coding is not exists alone in vacuum. You in any case need to eat something, to live somewhere, even considering computers/internet connection are free.
So, even when live in USSR, where ALL where non-capitalist, I rely on somebody, who pay me, and/or feed me, for some non-altruistic reasons.
In reality, money made things much easier, because you could just do work, got money and nothing more.
But if work done not for money, appear politics, relations, psychiatry and lot of other difficult things to consider.
For example, bureaucracy is not part of capitalism, it is only possible solution for large share of humanity problems.
- Big planes, like 747, only possible with bureaucracy, because their complexity is too high for any other form of organization - to build one 747 need about 600 human-years. - Imagine mutualism way of build such machines - they will be rare, like Great Pyramids, and customers will wait at least few decades for each plane.
Capitalism just pay for bureaucracy, because this is effective form of organization. And private ownership with one exclusive owner, is most effective form of ownership, all others magnitudes worse.
So you could talk about small projects without capitalism, not about large projects.
If it will be easier for you, imagine world in which every civilization achievement tied to only one country, and impossible to move production to other country, and all other countries are constantly bargain for scarce supply.
Imagine for example, all commodity automobiles produced only in Germany, by Daimler and BMW. They are good automobiles, but without bureaucracy nobody could copy them in big enough quantities, even Volkswagen is impossible without bureaucracy.
It is impossible to build PC without bureaucracy, only small, garage size firms.
To imagine, what is garage market like, read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983
Bureaucracy is only near guaranteed by science form of organization of more than 50 persons.
And exclusive owner is also most effective form, from known to science.
You really have something new to tell to person, who lived in the Soviet Union, where capitalism considered mortal sin?
And yes, I am aware nowadays: a few years ago I started re-examining my preexisting views, realized that I acquired most of them without a conscious choice, and then got past the "it's either capitalism or a totalitarian central-planned state" false dichotomy promoted by modern propaganda. Can only recommend doing the same because it's quite liberating after being traumatized by the Soviet experience.
The Anarchist FAQ can be a good starting point because it has lots of sections deconstructing the capitalist mythology: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-ed...
Cheers!
> WE'RE ALL EQUAL and we wanted that to show, both in the way our games are made and in the way we organise ourselves. So we chose to create a cooperative company. Everyone has a say and we all take home the same salary.
http://motion-twin.com/
I was confused by this since that seems tricky to do at a large company, since hierarchies are generally needed at some point to help with organization.
> 8 people.
Then I saw this. Much easier to do with 8 people. Seems like they've been a small team for a long time and that's what they like and they're going to stay that way. Small teams that don't plan to grow are refreshing after you spend so much time around companies that scale up so fast. Probably a really nice work environment too.
That said, I wonder how a cooperative with equal pay would scale to a company of say 1-200, or if that would even ever be a goal of a company like that.
It may seem tangential as it doesn't directly answer your stated question. But in keeping with the spirit of the technical aspect of hn discussions...
Your larger dipping into economics IMHO would be well served by keeping in mind how each particular system solves the freeloader problem aka the tragedy of the commons. IMHO that's the biggest and least often addressed real world problem when dealing with actual flesh and blood humans and not philosophical humans.
That'll tell you how well a particular system will scale with size of that system, what it does with people acting in a legal way, in a way that benefits themselves in the short term, but isn't good for the rest of the group in the long term.